CaT Reviews: Tech 10: Ultimatrix Unleashed!
This here is the first episode of CaT Reviews!, and to put down any worries of being biased, I'm going to be reviewing my old work to see where it stands. With that, here's my review of Tech 10: Ultimatrix Unleashed! (The original, not the rewrite.) Story The story of T10:UU is your average monster-of-the-week story with only a few arcs keeping everything together, similar to Omniverse. The first arc deals with Tech, the protagonist of the series, finding a (somehow) reset Ultimatrix, learning moral lessons to unlock aliens and defeat a mysterious poem writer, who turns out to be a crazy Cerebrocrustacean. (A concept also used by Omniverse.) The problems with this setup are already pretty apparent. You have to be a really good writer to make a moral-based series any good, and I certainly was not. Tech mainly just learns things he should've already known, and while kids are indeed stupid, they're not that incredibly stupid. ---- The second arc is a 'trilogy' (which is really four parts, so what even?) about Tech (maybe?) getting knocked unconscious and (maybe?) traveling to...ugh, Spherus Magna. For those who don't know, that is a location in the Bionicle franchise, which I was a very big fan of growing up, and has made a return as of late. Once there, he fights off a bunch of bad guys and ends up beating a (somehow) still-functioning Lehvak Kal, then cleans up and returns home, where he finds out he may have never even left in the first place. Aside from the logical questioning of how a pile of plastic action figures could hit someone hard enough to K.O. them, especially when they're an alien made of crystal, this arc is just plain dumb. Nothing is properly explained, the crossover aspect was stupid and pointless, and...no, that's about it. This thing was dumb even by my old standards. ---- Most of the series from here on out is Xenon, Vilgax and once even Aggregor (for some reason) attacking the planet and/or Tech, who unlocks new forms practically every episode and manages to beat these threats almost effortlessly. A bunch of things happen, including the Ultimatrix actually being a frame upgraded by a Galvanic Mechamorph, Tech's sister getting superpowers, and Tech finding out about an alternate Earth with a contradictory origin story, few of which really matter in the long run. ---- The series finale is a two-parter, with Tech facing off against a bounty hunter named Igneoux. Igneoux is actually a legitimate threat, being stronger than anything in Tech's arsenal, but Tech is able to defeat him by using a special 'flight' technique he developed for Rockoustic, and by using Fearoid's full body, which Igneoux really should have known about but somehow didn't. Igneoux leaves a bomb, which Tech manages to disable, and flies off, promising to return. Tech decides that he's going to quit being a hero because reasons, and the series ends. Good grief. Characters Even the most lackluster story can be saved by having good characters, as long as they're enjoyable to be with. These characters certainly are not. The main protagonist, Tech, at least gets kudos for not being a stereotypical piece of Wonderbread, but that's about all the kudos I can give. Seriously, this character couldn't have been more of an obvious author stand-in if I had physically teleported myself into the wiki to star in the series. Xenon is about as ridiculous and non-threatening as someone trying to be passed off as a legitimate threat can be. His presence is never actually intimidating, and since most episodes feature him as the villain, that seriously undermines the tension. Alvono, the Galvanic Mechamorph inhabiting the Ultimatrix, is your average snarky sidekick. Not much else to say there. Minor characters show up here and there, but for the most part, they're completely forgettable. Characters like Igneoux and Vilgax are expanded upon more in the next series, so I won't say anything about them here, but there is one character in particular that I want to discuss. WHO IS 'THE COWHERDER' FROM ALIEN 6. WHO IS HE AND WHAT WAS HIS PURPOSE IN EXISTING. WHO WHO WHOOOOOOO '' '' Writing As you can probably tell from the previous sections, this isn't going to be good either. First off, the grammar is absolutely terrible. Not the worst I've ever seen, but definitely up there. Words are constantly misspelled and misused, and dialogue spacing is practically nonexistent. The plot is a disheveled mess, jumping from scenario to scenario without properly explaining what's going on most of the time. When it does give us proper explanations, they're just exposition bombs that are often incredibly uninteresting to read. New aliens are unlocked almost every episode, characters appear and disappear to serve the plot, canon characters are completely out of character, and overall, the writing is just plain sloppy. Conclusions T10:UU is a sloppily written, cliche-ridden, and ultimately cringe-worthy series. It had some good ideas, such as the unique first-person storytelling, the rock humans, and the living Ultimatrix, but the execution was far too sloppy for this series to actually be good. Not the worst series I've seen, far from it in fact, but definitely my worst work on the wiki. And so, my final rating for this series is a Lost Potential, 3/10. Category:Reviews